SPN 8x09: Citizen Fang

[gryfndor_godess]

Firstly, I liked it overall, but what a strange episode.  Who would have thought that Don and Benny would come off looking the best?

(Other than Liz and Amelia, who were, of course, flawless.)

Because let’s look at our boys:

The cell phone trick was a shitty, shitty thing for Dean to do.  The fact that he did it to get Sam away from Benny and not specifically to cause him Amelia!pain doesn’t really mitigate things because why the fuck did he think he needed to have that ‘backup’ plan in the first place?  That is some premeditated shit, and it’s so underhanded and just not something you do to a friend, let alone a sibling (actually, thinking of my family, I can totally see my sister doing that to me but not to a friend because she'd know I would eventually forgive her; but still).  Wow.  My jaw was literally hanging open when Dean answered the phone.  I could not believe that Dean (and the writers) did that.

But if Dean wins Shitty Brother award, I wasn’t too pleased with Sam either by the end because of the way he just left Martin in the middle of the woods at night when he knew that (a) there could be vampires around and (b) Martin was maybe not mentally healthy and (c) did I mentioned, HE LEFT A MENTALLY UNBALANCED ACQUAINTANCE ALONE IN THE WOODS AT NIGHT.

WHAT, WHAT, WHAT ARE YOU DOING, BOYS.

The other thing that ticked me off about Sam’s behavior was when he left Amelia right after Don said they should let her choose.

My jaw was also hanging open when Don said that in the bar.  As soon as he started, “But the person who really knows what’s best for Amelia is…” I thought he was going to say himself because he’s the husband, but then he said Amelia, and I literally thought for a second I had heard wrong or, like, died and gone to a heaven where TV was always feminist and perfect.

Seriously, that was an incredible moment.

(I should not have to call that kind of thing incredible.  But for television, and show in particular, I think it is.)

And Benny…I haven’t seen the episode about his girlfriend, and I know that one will piss me off, but that aside, I actually really liked him in this episode.  His relationship with Liz was heartbreaking, and I don’t blame him at all for killing Martin (I think the whole Martin storyline was a little unfortunate, but that’s a writing issue, not a Benny issue).  The actor’s even growing on me, although every time he opens his mouth I still expect Sookie and Bill and Eric to waltz on-screen.  We should have just gone to Bon Temps this episode.

Dude, I would love to see Dean and Sam face off with Pam.  How excellent would that be?

Anyway, even though I like Benny well enough, I still don’t want him to become a bigger part of the show because (a) we have enough dicks on this show and (b) he comes between the brothers and DO NOT WANT.  Occasional ally like Garth?  Sure.  Main staple like Cas?  Please no.

Regarding the writing, I’m seeing an awful lot of flak toward Daniel Loflin on Tumblr and people saying that such-and-such was OOC, etc.  Mostly about Dean and the cell phone trick (also about Dean flirting with Liz, but I liked that; and I laughed out loud at his ‘shit’ face when he found out she was Benny’s great-granddaughter).  I don’t know if I would go so far as to call it OOC, but it did really surprise me.  Another not-really-OOC-moment-but-also-a-surprise moment IMO was when Sam just left Dean cuffed to the radiator, still bleeding.  I dunno what to think these days; this is definitely not the brotherly relationship of old, which makes me sad.

(That whole, “Benny’s never once let me down”/“Must be nice to have someone you can trust like that” exchange, WTF, UGH.)

I liked the writing overall, though.  I thought the flashbacks were more seamless in this episode than in any other (although there were fewer than usual, and I’ve only seen four S8 episodes, so~), and I liked the story well enough.  I thought the interaction between Dean, Sam, and Martin in the first half was pretty spot-on.  I loved that Sam was willing to give Dean a few extra hours.  And then when they paralleled it with him telling Amelia to take all the time she needed, my heart just about burst.  SAMMY!

I like that they used Martin again (although he had better not be the early seasons character the rumors were about, because he is not from S3), but I wasn’t that comfortable with the portrayal of his mental illness.  For him to come “unhinged” on his first hunt?  Sure, that makes sense, I guess.  But I think turning him into a kidnapper/stalker/would-be murderer was taking things too far.  I dunno.  I guess that being dismissed and derided by Dean, being abandoned by Sam, and truly believing that Benny killed those people (and why wouldn’t you, unless you were Dean) could make anyone crack, and it was a plausible way to use his character, but I think his characterization as it related to his mental illness could have been handled a lot more sensitively.

Regarding the ending, that wasn’t nearly as big a cliffhanger as I was expecting it to be.  Honestly, I can’t be too fussed about Sam/Amelia.  I know there’ll be drama, but I also know that they won’t last, because women on this show just don’t.  So the most I can hope for is that she lives happily ever after with Don and isn’t fridged to cause Sam manpain.  So as far as a cliffhanger goes, that one certainly doesn’t qualify as a doozy.

I was more surprised that the show left the brothers’ relationship such a mess.  I guess the emphasis is a good thing, though, because it presumably means the writers will really focus on it in the second half of the season instead of fixing it all too easily/quickly.  I liked how Cas yelled at them in the promo.

Speaking of which, Tumblr is going more apeshit over the promo than the actual episode.  I’m not feeling too fussed about 8x10 either, but then, I am not a Cas!girl.

Pretty good episode overall, I think, and a decent enough mid-season finale.  I expected a mid-season finale to have more oomph to it, but honestly, I’m happy with the way it was because really, who wants to be tortured by cliffhangers for a month and a half.

If anything, S8 is teaching me that I really have to change the way I watch this show.  In the first five seasons, even when the boys were being stupid or mean or fucking up, I could pretty much count on them to always do the right thing by each other in the end, and I always felt that their relationship had a truly solid underpinning, even when it had awful rough patches.  Now…I don’t trust them to do right by each other, and I’m not sure they’ll ever be as close as they were, which is very depressing.  While I utterly adored them as both characters and people in the early seasons, I love S8!Dean and Sam more as well written characters and less as people I’d want to know in real life.

Although don’t get me wrong, I’d still bang both of them in a heartbeat.

Just not at the same time.

Comments

[pocochina.livejournal.com]

My jaw was also hanging open when Don said that in the bar. As soon as he started, “But the person who really knows what’s best for Amelia is…” I thought he was going to say himself because he’s the husband, but then he said Amelia, and I literally thought for a second I had heard wrong or, like, died and gone to a heaven where TV was always feminist and perfect.

Wow, that was not what I got from that moment at all. I mean, maybe if it hadn't come after a monologue about how well, he guess he doesn't ~blame them for doing something so ~wrong which was so ~hard on him to come back to after things were just ~awful for him and UGH YOU'RE SO RUDE FOR HAVING ANYTHING TO SAY AT ALL when I am clearly the good guy here. Which is like, Disc 1 of Dean's Greatest Hits? so this:

The other thing that ticked me off about Sam’s behavior was when he left Amelia right after Don said they should let her choose.

I think is a little unfair. Because (a) he's responding to a lived pattern of psychological abuse about which he can hardly be expected to be reasonable, (b) even if he weren't, respecting someone's decisions doesn't necessitate putting yourself through sitting around every day watching them make those decisions, and (c) we know they were still together to some extent in the season premiere before he left to go to the cabin, so it's hardly like he threw down an ultimatum. I think he was missing a lot of signals from Amelia because of his own issues, for sure, and he could've communicated better with her, but the idea that this is Bad Behavior doesn't sit quite right with me.

[gryfndor-godess.livejournal.com]

Wow, that was not what I got from that moment at all. I mean, maybe if it hadn't come after a monologue

Well, I think the rest of his speech was pretty crappy, but that particular line stood out to me because it was so atypical of what you normally hear from guys on television.

While I disliked his rude, aggressive attitude toward Sam- the delivery of his speech, basically- I don't fault him for the sentiment behind it. I'd be hurt and bitter, too, if I came back from war (possibly a POW?) and my significant other had fallen in love with someone else. Amelia and Sam are obviously not at fault at all, but it's a sucky situation all around, and I can understand why Don reacts the way he does, and I sympathize with him, even if my loyalties are with Sam.

Because (a) he's responding to a lived pattern of psychological abuse about which he can hardly be expected to be reasonable

I'm not really sure how this relates to his decision re: Amelia? I completely agree that Sam has as much right to leave the relationship as Amelia does. My issue is that he left not 24 hours after basically saying he wanted to fight for their relationship; he agreed to give her time, and then he turned tail and ran. I'm not saying it makes him a ~Terrible Person or anything, but I think it was unfair to her.